What do you love to paint the most? You’ll never know until you explore a wide variety of subject matter. This workshop presents a sampler of popular watercolor subjects: landscapes, still life, and portraits. Kelly will show you how watercolor’s unique properties can do the heavy lifting in each painting. Watch it create a serene blue sky, a soft shadow defining a cheekbone, and reflected light on a shiny surface–all in seconds. You’ll paint a card with a spring landscape that you might like so much you won’t want to send it, followed by a colorful still life painting of gum balls. Next you’ll practice painting a series of facial features in anticipation of the final project, a limited-palette portrait that is easier than you might imagine. Watercolor is challenging and can take decades to master, but this medium’s special quirks are so seductive you might find yourself under its spell for the rest of your life.

Week 1, March 5: Card with Spring Landscape
Masking fluid is a watercolor artist’s secret weapon, and we will use it to create a painting of a flowering tree in a spring landscape. And if you would like to paint multiple cards, you’ll see how easy it is to develop variations on this tree to suit your color preferences. Magnolia? Red bud? Apple? Forsythia? The choice is yours.

Week 2, March 12: Bubble Gum Still Life
This workshop is about something most beginning artists don’t consider: reflected light. We’ll learn how colorful objects can influence each other. This effect is surprisingly easy to replicate with wet-into-wet watercolor, and we’ll practice that by painting a few gum balls. We’ll also learn how to create the candy’s shiny surface using masking fluid.

Week 3, March 19: Practicing Facial Features
How do you paint something difficult? It helps if you break it down into small parts and tackle them one at a time. We will practice painting a sheet of individual eyes, noses, and mouths in various positions. Feeling scared? Paint with a single color. Feeling brave? Try full color. It’s the easiest way to dip your artistic big toe into the ocean of portrait painting.

Week 4, March 26: Limited-Palette Portrait
We’ll use skills learned in Week 3’s workshop to paint a limited-palette watercolor portrait using your choice of colors. After drawing a pencil outline of our subject’s main features, we will use masking fluid to establish highlights. Then comes the fun part: we will coat the entire sheet of paper with several analogous colors. Once that is dry, we will work on the features using a darker color. This colorful twist on an old-school exercise is popular for a reason: it makes portrait painting a lot less intimidating.

How Our Online Workshops Work

1. Get Ready: A month prior to the start of each workshop, you can visit the workshop page for a supply list.

2. Register (optional): You have the option of creating a student account. Doing this will ensure that you receive an email at the start of each workshop to let you know it has begun. This will also allow you to participate in the discussion forum for each workshop and post photos of your artwork in the gallery.

During the month that a workshop is releasing, the Instructor participates in the discussion forum and answers questions you may have regarding the lessons.

3. Start: On the start date of each workshop, simply visit the workshop page for links to video lessons and instructions. Videos are located in the Workshop 1, Workshop 2, and Workshop 3 tabs after their start date. Follow along and watch for free!

4. Participate: Once a workshop opens, you can view video lessons and download instructions for each week. Feel free to participate in discussions and share your work in the gallery. After a workshop is posted, the video lessons and instruction sheets will remain on the site for viewing throughout the entire year. Join in and follow along at your own pace!